New brewer help!

[richard_langford]

Hi,
Today went through my first brew, I've set up for all grain but I thought I'd use a extract for the first time! Got all the way through no real problems got my chilled wort into fermenter only had 15litres, thought that was it so closed the lid and went in the house, just reading my beer book to see I forgot to add my water into the fermenter, so I've just done it now, 1 hour after I pitched the yeast.. Is this going to be a problem? Learnt a lot today! Can't wait to try all grain!

 

[BrewerinBR]

I do not do extract but I would think your fine. The original gravity you took before adding water will be off so you may take another.

 

[richard_langford]

Yeah I thought I'd done something wrong with the reading of .70 when it should have been .48! I did the extract because I wanted to go through the brew and not complicate it too much, I've got a all grain kit ready to go ill do that in a week or so

 

[Enoch52]

You'll be fine. You were still hours at least before fermentation really began--an hour in and the yeast are just getting settled, reproducing, etc.

By the way, OG is often difficult to measure with an extract beer simply because you're usually mixing a high-density liquid (the wort) with top-off water, and it's usually not mixed well enough to get a good reading. However, because the hardest part (extracting the sugars from the grain) is already done, you can generally assume that you hit the OG that's listed for the recipe.

 

[Travestian]

You will be just fine. Just be sure you stirred in the top off water very well.

 

[cooldood]

Don't worry you just made beer.

 

[richard_langford]

Yeah I did stir it in well, just checked the OG and it read 1044, the recipe says 1047 so I'm not far off, quick question, do I have to stay by while the boil is on all the way through? Or do you pop in and out, I was worried it would boil over so I stayed with it all the way through but is this necessary?

 

[USAFSooner]

Stay with the boil until the hot break is over. The hot break is all the crazy foam that happens early in the boil like when you make mashed potatoes. Also after any hop additions or Extract additions.